


Ónen i-Estel Edain

by vardasvapors (cynewulf)



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Edain, Foreshadowing, Gen, Twin Relationship, War of Wrath, like a billion athrabeth references, numenorean foresight, this fic is like 96 percent metaphor by weight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-01-30 13:33:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12654543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynewulf/pseuds/vardasvapors
Summary: There, in the farthest ship, like a reflection at the bottom of a deep well, he saw that Elrond still brought up the rear. Implacable as the stars’ map in the night, silhouette unmistakable: sword slung over his back with its hilt-wrappings fluttering in the firestorm, one hand shielding his eyes from flying hair and ash, driving the fleet before him in the foam of Elros’s wake.Elros in the aftershock of the sinking of Beleriand, creeping realization and impending doom, and, as always, a twin brother. For the prompt: "One foot in another world"





	Ónen i-Estel Edain

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://vardasvapors.tumblr.com/post/163571804269/elros-andor-elrondone-foot-in-another-world) for this [meme](http://stonelions.tumblr.com/post/124337611940/30-multipurpose-prompts-open-to-interpretation)

Down came the ashes of the old world from the sky wreathed in fire, and cinders fell hissing like meteors, in the thousands upon thousands, from the vault of spiraling smoke. The sea was boiling, foam dyed red in the light, and its brim tipped up, up as the earth beneath it tipped down, as it flooded east into the dark and the fleet of the Edain came tumbling after. When Elros looked over his shoulder, blistered hands slipping on the rigging of the foremost ship, eyes stinging with fumes, the boats fanned behind him scrambled and tossed upon the bubbling waves. Behind them the north and west were white-pillared with steam, as the onrushing sea quenched the ruin of the great battlefield that had consumed the earth.

He counted for the dozenth time in battened panic, the back-and-forth making his head spin, trying to see both the peril ahead and the fleet behind. The boats he had built and mended and scavenged on a straw’s hope in the doomed lands, while the others had been fighting in sightless grief and fury at their race’s blighted youth, pale and desperate beside the great host whose might could rend the earth. He had not gainsaid their claim, nor their valor, in that hour, but now this time was his time, and he would not lose another, not one more.  
  
In the dark the very waters were lost, the very air scorched the eyes, but the fleet held their angle, bows all still pointing to him, sails whipped taut in the wind. There, in the farthest ship, like a reflection at the bottom of a deep well, he saw that Elrond still brought up the rear. Implacable as the stars’ map in the night, silhouette unmistakable: sword slung over his back with its hilt-wrappings fluttering in the firestorm, one hand shielding his eyes from flying hair and ash, driving the fleet before him in the foam of Elros’s wake. Even from this distance, Elros could see, or knew so well he did not need to see, when those eyes that were his eyes found him through the throng and the rain of fire. Elros could read his twin’s thoughts by less than the lift of his chin — _Take care and never you mind! None are yet lost, and here I shall remain, if all the lands about us should fall into the sea._  
  
The knot about his throat eased in relief, and he dared to turn his eyes forward and trust the others would follow after.    
  
The ocean’s fury hurled them helpless before it, but its end was uncertain, while what lay behind was certain — drowning and fire, Beleriand devoured in the frothing waves. The eastern lands gaped open between the broken blue mountains bleeding liquid gold bright as dragonfire, but it did not crumble — the sea that carried the ships swirled inland into the breach. A cry raised up in the boat to his left, old Handir once of Sirion too, to _Hold back! Hold back, breakers ahead!_ But Elros whirled round and scrambled up onto the stern, where all who followed could see him.  
  
“Steady on!” he cried over the ships, pitching his voice up to a sailor’s call though the wind tore the words from his lips. His heart was pounding in his throat with the terror of their multitude — all in his hands! Happenstance and improvisation had wrought this, when had he agreed to this? “Steady on! Hear ye men of Beleriand! The foe has fallen, and it is not the sea! We shall not die making war on his minions upon a sinking battlefield, as if their lives were worth ours, as if there is nothing else left upon the earth for us. If we die now instead, we shall die in pursuit of what we were promised. The inheritance of this earth, we were promised! This flame of life in this dark earth, we were promised! We have come to it by the sea, and the sea shall keep you. All you men, now! Sails up, hard to port! Onwards!”  
  
His sail caught the hot wind roaring out of the west, and he rode into the gulf. Those just behind him came too, but the storm raged loud and he could not tell how many had heard him; when he looked back again he could not see them. The darkness fell like a veil, of terror and threatening loss, but faint and piercing, in his ears or in his mind, he heard the call rise in answer from the very end of the line, like an echo, that voice that was his voice — _Hear him, all! Hard to port! Onwards!_ What ease of mind it was to be a twin, as lucky as having two hands, he thought deliriously, and into the nameless dark he plunged forward.  
  
The water opened before him, curled around them, and the Edain fared forth behind him. He saw their faces in the reflected light of the lanterns and the fire at the mountaintops, stunned by this strand of hope, long lost for the second children of the earth, who had gone to battle grim and expecting death. The hush of their wonder smote him — grace unlooked for, deliverance by the catastrophic wrath of the sea. His ships held fast, and his men too, and his brother with them, and so did he as he led them. Down, down they passed into broken Ossiriand, hallowed Ossiriand, where his ancestors had walked. The dead who lived. They cast themselves upon the sea, and the sea did keep them.

 

* * *

 

They were laid ashore upon a spit gleaming in the bloody light, while the gulf pooled in like a spoon. There were hours of steady labor as ship after ship was brought in, voices repeating into a drone, far as could be from the cries of elation and death in the collapsing vortex of the final assault. Elros was dimly aware of gripping the hands of a dozenth, hundredth, survivor in the surf, aware too of some strange thing — though many were comrades of long years, some looked up at him with a blazing look he could not name in their eyes, some opened their mouth to speak yet did not. His mind was too overtaxed to ponder it. They were safe. Men and boys, and girls dressed as boys, and women hardened as the men, and the hair and features and rusted crests of the people of Hador and Bëor and Haleth; made more alike than not by the decades of war. In a moment’s pause he searched the crowd, off-kilter, and across the beach he saw Elrond knee-deep in the water, drenched and dirty as a water rat, so tall he had to bend nearly in half to hold up Handir and another old soldier, too old to be fighting if there had been anything else for them, still protesting though they were weighed down in armor. Elros smiled at that though his singed lips cracked, expecting his twin’s answering wink as was his wont, but Elrond looked up, filthy hair stringing across his soot-blackened face, and his eyes seared him too, with that unknowable thing. Elros felt his throat close. His head ached. He was so tired.  
  
Far away someone was crying victory to the sky. From inland, a clean wind with the long-lost scent of green swept down on the Edain washed up from death. The night wound down, the waters calmed, the voices sank. The roar of the tide that had carried them died away, and from the slowed and softened sea came the sighing of waves foaming into crumbled lace upon the new-made shore, and he knew all over again that the lands behind were drowned. It fell like a blow. When he stopped at last and looked up, people stood about in the shallow water like wind-up toys with stilled keys, heads turned to the west.  
  
He was with them, he would be with them. A moment more and he would join them. He needed to speak to them, there were a hundred, thousand things he needed to ask of them, but for a moment he lingered. For this one moment, he longed for only one, and another, strange sorrow came pouring into his longing. Something more than the lands was slipping away from him. In the hush a voice in the rarer Bëorian tongue arose in a song of praise. He watched as Elrond handed his last charges ashore and fell upon his hands and knees, kissed the ash-choked beach in the firelight as the waters rolled back.  
  
“O life, sweet earth that is life, how lucky am I!” Elros heard his brother whisper, croon even, to the waiting sands.  
  
Elros felt a pang and looked away—Beleriand which was lost, Sirion which was lost, never touched again by hand or foot beneath the ocean tide. So this then, was the tale of the earth. Whole they were, in memory, those deeds that took them to the north to witness it, and brought them back to remember it. To pass away and to be lost—then what of the span of life before that? He remembered the earth buckled beneath their feet, when the tattered host of the Edain had seen, they thought, the end of all things, and surged forward in war-fever, reveling in the embrace of death, their laughter scraping the falling sky. The glancing flame of his father’s light and the whirling murmuration of his mother’s birds above Ancalagon and Thangorodrim, and the Edain’s cry ringing in wrath greater than the full hosts of Valinor, defiant against the cruelty of their tale, defiance against the world so consuming it must set in death, seeing no hope but death in glory before them. _Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima!_ _Cast the sky down upon us, fell our foe with us, and we shall be glad! Now comes the night!_

But Elros remembered too, that far far below them, with feet upon the broken land, he had been the one to come between the Edain and that death, blind and deaf in his white-hot fury. They would not die here, not now, in the shockwave of the great powers, for more they had been promised. He remembered tearing the sword out of Elrond’s hand, shaking him, shouting _Stop it, stop it now, have you lost all your minds, if you had any to begin with? Have you no hope? To me! Follow me!_ Until the fey terrible light in his twin’s eyes snuffed out, and he dropped back like a shadow to take the rearguard of the host, and followed. And down Elros had led them, through the all the ruin, to Cabed Naeramarth that had become the shore of the encroaching waters, where he had laid his anchors. To his ships and the cradle of the sea—  
  
_And whither then?_  
  
By the shore he stood with head tilted to the sky. The new-formed gulf was blood red, wide and now still, Beleriand was all around, ashes and memories and defiled things all unmade; and in the silent waters they dissolved. He looked into the west and caught his breath. There above the sea the smoke and clouds had torn open, and beyond the gap were stars, unmoved by the tumult of the lands below, blue and cool against the smoldering sky. But yet more still and more clear was the darkness between them, that was the edge of Eä. Deep as the ocean, deep as thought.  
  
Some leap of joy so strange, as if a minor key of an alien music, that it seemed pain as well, pierced him. His knees felt weak, and he collapsed upon a nearby rock and laid his head on his hands.  
  
_Now what?_  
  
Dim with weariness, he heard the tread of ragged boots as familiar as his own pulse, and did not bother to look up.  
  
“How goes it?”  
  
“‘The Stone of the Hapless shall not be ever thrown down, not though the sea should drown all the land,’” murmured that voice that was his voice. “If I were a full elf I might have remembered that, before you had to rescue your fool brother and fool company single-handed.”  
  
Elros laughed and dragged his head up, the image in his mind clear before he even opened his eyes: Elrond smiling with his nose wrinkled and his hands on his hips, eyes twinkling through the grime, pinched underneath with exhaustion.  
  
“Hail, brother. Thank you, for guarding the rear.” Elros tried to rise. “Help me up. The men, the boats, I must — they are not finished, I am needed —”  
  
“Most dearly needed, so sit a while so that you do not fall on your face.” Elrond knelt in the mud at his feet and pulled him down, steadied him. “Hush! Rest now. Your men are in no trouble. The ships are all in. The war has passed away with the world.”  
  
_Away, with the world. Are we then for this world?_  
  
“And yet there are people still alive.” Elros dug his bloodied palms into his eyes. “If all the world fell, there is that. We came to the sea, and it held us.”  
  
“Aye, and I thank you. I had forgotten it would, grandson of Tuor,” He turned Elros’s hands over and clicked his tongue in disapproval. “Look at these blisters! Take more care, I beg. You are more to me than anything in this world.”  
  
Elros felt his breath catch. He leaned into Elrond’s hold, precarious. “I got them on the rigging. Better than a wound by a sword. Which reminds me, I must return you yours.”  
  
Unless they had to separate, Elrond usually carried both swords, crossed over his back, knowing how Elros hated them. But the sword Elros had torn away on the battlefield was Narsil, forged by Telchar at the first rising of the sun, the sword of kings; and Elrond stilled and looked at him as he had before, almost blazing, if the flame were not so soft.  
  
“Aye,” he said again, and the word wobbled. “Far more fitting a glory, I think, for your people, and your times.” He pulled Elros’s hands from the sword hilt and pressed them to his own heart, so tenderly it was like breaking. “Keep the sword. I think you have found a better use for it than I.”  
  
Elros sat and stared at their entwined hands until he felt like crying, and told himself it was weariness, though he felt the knocking at the back of his mind.  
  
“I did not wield it.” His voice was choked.  
  
“As I said, a better use than I.”  
  
Elros closed his eyes. Against his raw fingers, he felt his brother's heartbeat. The first sound he had ever heard. _Loss. It is loss_ , came foresight’s unfinished cruelty.  
  
“Elros?”  
  
He lifted his head.  
  
“Elrond, I have missed something,” he said, finally. “What have I missed?”  
  
Elrond looked up at him so strangely the hairs stood up on the back of Elros’s neck. He was used to understanding what he saw in his twin’s eyes.  
  
“Do you not hear them, Elros?” Elrond whispered.  
  
“Hear them?” Elros whispered back, almost holding his breath. “Hear what? I hear the sea and the mountains, and the people calling for their kin—”  
  
“Listen!”  
  
They stared at each other, wide-eyed. The voices of the Edain encircled them. Elros heard again the Bëorian verses, raised in praise to the sky and the earth, heard a new one to the sea.  
  
He heard a name, _Indilzar_ , that was _star-foam._  
  
“They are calling for you.”  
  
The look in Elrond’s eyes burned deep, and Elros realized that it was pride.  
  
“They are singing for you.”  
  
His vision shimmered and melted, and he could not speak for the tears stinging his eyes and throat. He gripped Elrond’s hands in his own and squeezed them as hard as he could.  
  
_His times. His world._  
  
He remembered the upturned faces in the red glow upon the waves, the rigging in his hands. The wind in his sails at the front of the line.  
  
“Did you mark when I put my foot in it?” he said finally. His voice cracked, and he laughed.  
  
“I know not.” Elrond gave a rueful smile. “But dear heart, it was before the sea rose to hold you. For me, at least.”  
  
“I know. I knew and would not see. I was with you. I was afraid, I am afraid. I did not wish to be anywhere but by your side. Forgive me, forgive me, I am so sorry. The war—” Elros felt more laughter bubbling up. The dented swords held up in the glow of the land’s death throes, in the flash of Eärendil — rags and bloodied hands and empty vengeance. _Now comes the night._ “They thought there was nothing more here on earth, on this side of the stars, but I know, I _know_ , in my heart, it cannot be that. It is not release without life before. And it cannot be that we will be denied release. And I know I…”  
  
_I know that I am lost,_ the words came unspoken.  
  
“’Twas your heart they took as their own, not your will, nor your name,” said Elrond. On his knees, he moved even closer. “They would go where you go, if you sailed over the rim of the world. Do you not see? I have heard them say, a people for whom the _Narn i Hîn Húrin_ is not a tragedy of their past, but the only true tale of their existence, would accept no deliverance but that which tore them from that tale’s doom and made a new ending. Have you not done that? Torn away and remade the black sword, and the river, and the sea? Ah, Elros, how proud am I! So proud — so proud I have no words to hold it. How lucky am I, to know such pride. I shall never forget it, never, never. Say but the word, and I will go where you go too, if you need it.” His eyes and voice were brimming with tears.  
  
“I would follow you, my brother.”  
  
His head bent. Elros felt lips brush his fingers.  
  
“I would follow you, my lord.”  
  
Elros wrenched his hands back. “Don’t—” He did not understand the clutch of panic, but if he had broken one tale of doom he would not craft another for one who had never been and could never be free of him. “Whatever it shall be, it shall not be like that. Not at my heels. And…” He swallowed. “You ought not make promises you have no business keeping.”  
  
For a moment Elrond’s eyes flashed mutinous, that same defiance so consuming it could seemingly only express itself in death, then the flame banked. He met Elros's gaze a searching moment, then nodded.  
  
“So be it.”  
  
The simplicity stung his eyes yet again. So it was. “You honor me.”  
  
Elrond shook his dark head. “I do not know all chances beyond sight. It was high-handed. Forgive me. But Elros, what of your people?”  
  
They did not speak. The sea whispered like another chorus beneath the singing. Something was calling far and clear, like a trumpet on a high hill out of sight. That to the old time there was no returning.  
  
“The lives of mortal men,” Elros murmured finally. “I know not, I see nothing, but that there is more than memory. The old lands and tales were true, but of life robbed before its flower — unconscionable, unbearable. Surely, it must not be so unbearable.” He tried to recall his clarity of purpose in the flight upon the sea, eyes forward, trusting the others came behind, past all edges of night, though the earth fell all to ruin.  
  
_I am lost,_ he marveled. And the bereavement clawed deep. He dropped his head onto Elrond’s shoulder.  
  
“What have I gotten myself into?”  
  
The survivors triumphant of the last Edain of the old world were singing, they were singing for him, him alone, and it rang in his ears like a death-knell far off in the mists of dawn by the sea, sweetened strangely, as if by soft salt air and the echoing hills.  
  
The shoulder beneath his forehead shuddered, and for a moment he thought Elrond was crying. But when he looked into his face, he saw in amazement that his hand was over his mouth and his eyes dancing with mirth.  
  
“Oh for pity’s sake, need you laugh at my troubles now?”  
  
“Ah, Elros!” Elrond sat back in a sudden transport of delight, wild and near-elvish. “It would have been a catastrophe indeed had I followed right at your heels, but the look on your face when you saw me following far behind, with your fleet safe between us, and you knew I had found you in the storm! You did not hear how I laughed then, though I fear all those around me did.”  
  
Elros stared. “I—you—Elrond what nonsense are you talking?”  
  
Elrond’s eyes went grave. “Perhaps you do not know all chances beyond sight either, nor what paths, so have patience! But have one fixed point at least: you are a twin, brother. If you need a rearguard I will guard it, if your host reaches halfway across the sea. And if your ship had indeed tipped over the edge of the world and been lost—” His hands gripped Elros’s hands, tight, the familiar flare of foresight, “—then, when your fleet was all in safe harbor, I would follow after at the very last. I do not promise lightly. If I had to search the foam tumbling down into the stars for all eternity, to the bottom of Eä, until the sun and moon are lost too, I would find you once more.”  
  
Elros held his breath, his heart in his mouth. The fire and sea and ash spun into a shell around them like a womb, and the world was nothing but the two of them, and the trembling silence, like the stillness that hung a moment between the waves upon the shore.  
  
“If I must come through the deeps of time, I will find you.” Elrond’s eyes held his, caught him. “Will you wait for me?”  
  
“I will wait,” whispered Elros. He laid his forehead against his twin’s and closed his eyes, and heard the heartbeat that was his heartbeat, in his ears, in the warm inside of his chest, as certain as a keel righting itself in the starlit bay. “I will wait,” he said, and he knew he spoke the truth.  
  
“Until the breaking of the world.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from Gilraen's line in The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, from Appendix A of Lord of the Rings: _"I gave Hope to the Edain"_


End file.
